This is the second vessel to visit Corpus since Cheniere
started producing LNG in November at the plant's first
liquefaction train, a building-sized unit used to cool natural
gas into LNG. It could be the first vessel to pick up a cargo
there.

Cheniere said the first vessel, LNG Golar Tundra, did not
pick up LNG. The company, however, did not say why the vessel
was at Corpus.

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Officials at Cheniere were not immediately available to say
whether Maria Energy would pick up any LNG. Traders have noted
the facility has been producing LNG since the middle of
November.

Corpus Christi is the third big LNG export terminal to enter
service in the lower 48 U.S. states.

The first was Cheniere's Sabine Pass terminal in Louisiana,
which sent out its first cargo in February 2016. Since then,
Sabine has delivered around 500 cargoes to at least 29 countries
and regions around the world.

The company has said it expects Corpus 1 and the fifth
liquefaction train at Sabine Pass to enter commercial service in
the first quarter of 2019, followed by Corpus 2 in the second
half of 2019 and Corpus 3 in the second half of 2021.

Each of Cheniere's trains is capable of liquefying about 0.7
billion cubic feet per day (bcfd) of natural gas. One billion
cubic feet is enough to fuel about 5 million U.S. homes for a
day.

U.S. LNG exports have almost quadrupled from 183.9 billion
cubic feet (bcf) in 2016 to 706.4 bcf in 2017, worth about $3.3
billion, and are on track to rise to over 1,000 bcf in 2018,
making the United States one of the world's biggest exporters of
the super-cooled gas.

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Total U.S. LNG export capacity is expected to jump to 5.2
bcfd by the end of 2018, 8.9 bcfd by the end of 2019 and 10.3
bcfd by the end of 2020 from 4.5 bcfd now, which should make the
United States the world's third-biggest LNG exporter by capacity
in 2019.

Cheniere is also developing a sixth 0.7-bcfd train at Sabine
Pass and seven smaller 0.2-bcfd trains and other opportunities
at Corpus.

Cheniere has estimated the cost of the first five trains at
Sabine, including financing, at between $17.5 billion and $18.5
billion.